just when you thought it was safe to surf the net

4.44 a.m.

The Shadow at the Window

Possibly tonight, maybe tomorrow night, but one night very soon you’re going to wake from a deep sleep.  Maybe it will be a storm that wakes you or maybe just a noise in the house.

Reluctantly you’ll open your eyes and look at the clock; it will show 4.43 but as you’re looking the time will change to 4.44.

Sighing, you’ll roll over – only to see a shadow at the window. You’ll gasp and it will disappear and you’ll tell yourself it was just your imagination.

Then though, the door slowly opens, the light from the hallway escaping into your room.  It is then you’ll see the shadow at the door, coming into the room.

You’ll pull back your cover as the shadow advances closer and it’s then you’ll see the silhouette of a knife in the shadow’s hand.

Standing over you the shadow raises the arm that is holding the knife and strikes down fast.

You’ll scream.

Your scream will wake you. Your body, your stomach, will be soaking wet.  You’ll slowly reach down to your stomach and wipe away the blood, but in the early morning light you’ll see it is not blood – just perspiration from your dream.

You’ll lay back down in relief and close your eyes.  You’ll open them to take one more look at the time on the clock.  It will say 4.43.  As you’re watching, the time will change to 4.44.

You’ll sigh again and roll over – to see a shadow at the window ……..

The new cover

I love it when a story takes a life of its own, born from a seed or a germ of an idea; it grows and changes constantly, taking the writer on a roller coaster of a ride of which the writer has no control. I am just the pen or the typist putting down the words, the characters, the plots and storylines. The characters come to life in my dreams and in my mind.

As a child I remember my mum taking me to see The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm film, starring British actor, Laurence Harvey. There’s a scene where Wilhelm, Grimm, played by Harvey, (the main writer of the brother’s fairy tales) is dying and all the characters Wilhelm has created come to his bed, telling Wilhelm that if he dies they all die – they include Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Repunzel and Tom Thumb and many more. That strong scene has stayed with me all this time and I identify with it. The characters in my stories are their own ‘person’, with their own personalities.

This is the case with The Preacher. I’ve had the idea for several years – a Welsh Baptist, hard-drinking, womanizing preacher traveling around mainly the small rural villages in Wales delivering sermons, but also causing disruption and creating mayhem in every town. At one point it moved to Tennessee but has now returned to Wales.

A new storyline though wrote itself in the normally empty space that is my brain; the body of a young woman who has been horrifically raped and murdered is found; she was murdered by her ex-boyfriend and his friends.

The murder rips apart the small village where she and her ex-boyfriend had lived since birth – they were childhood sweethearts.

The murder leads villagers to question their faith, including the preacher, whilst others turn deeper to their faith for support. The once harmonious village is divided as sides are taken and support given to either one of the two families, her family and his family. The preacher, with the help of the pastor at the local church, has to try and heal the village and help it come to terms with the tragedy. There’s a funeral to prepare for and also a trial and it’s not going to be easy to repair the damage and the preacher knows the village will never be the same.

I used to attend a Baptist church in Cardiff throughout my childhood so drew inspiration from that.

There’s a new cover too for the book too.

The situation in Ukraine continues to deepen and casualties increase, daily, with now millions of refugees fleeing the country. In Britain 90,000 as I type this have offered their homes to refugees. 

It is of course an intense and complicated situation – nobody wants World War III.

We are always encouraged to stand up to bullies, whether it be in a playground or school or just in life in general.  Putin is a bully, simple as, and a dangerous one, and standing up to him could indeed start a world war.  He has now approached China to help and I hope that they do not get involved.  India also has been very quiet.  These superpowers need to use their positions in stopping Putin and his dream of going back to the U.S.S.R.

Putin

Images daily show the horrific truth.  Putin in Russia has been spreading fake news claiming he is simply protecting Russia from the West who are the aggressors, and many Russians are believing him.

Yesterday running through statistics from my social media accounts and website I saw that many of my followers are from Russian and the Ukraine, and in particular, Moscow!  How or why I have no idea but I welcome them, but I also plead with them through this blog to not believe Putin and his lies.  Innocent people are dying and as he gets more desperate to save face, as the invasion has not gone to plan, he now threatens chemical weapons or even nuclear missiles, as he gets closer to Poland too.

He obviously must be stopped, but the questions is how, without a world war?  Sanctions are a start but how far is the west going to let him go until they respond in force?  Where is the United Nations Peace corps?  Can they not at least go into Ukraine and help?

Ukraine’s hero, Zelenshy

There simply is no easy answer and the west must tread carefully but they must respond, but are we prepared for a world war?

Alec Baldwin on the day of the shooting

The story of the tragedy that happened on the movie set of Rust, starring and produced by Baldwin, still continues to be compulsive reading.  

Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot by a gun Baldwin was holding.  He now claims he didn’t actually pull the trigger, which many gun experts have said would be almost impossible for the gun to fire itself.

Halyna Hutchins

Baldwin, perhaps understandably, is on damage limitation.  As a producer of the film he is possibly twice liable.  For me, his interview wherein he did deny pulling the trigger, did not ring true; he’s an actor for a start, (for me not a particularly good one, he does pick good roles) so he can turn on the tears on cue.

There are several questions to be answered, the main one being how and why was live ammunition on set?  How were live bullets in the gun in the first place?  Why did Baldwin not check and double check?  George Clooney is just one actor/director/producer who has come out and said that there is no need for live bullets on any film set.

The set of the movie, Rust, in New Mexico

In many cases a sound effect is added to the footage to make the firing sound of a gun more powerful – many guns are actually quite quiet when shot.

All these questions I am sure will be answered in the various lawsuits.  I don’t like that a couple of the crew are suing – it seems opportunistic to me.  The only people who should be suing are, of course, the family of Halyna Hutchins, (which they are) and the director, Joel Souza, who was also shot but survived.

Baldwin’s ‘people’ – his lawyers, agent, publicists and manager, will all be telling him what to do and say.  However, if nothing else, I just feel he needs to admit responsibility, regardless, however improbable, of whether he pulled the trigger or not.  He was responsible for the death of a talented person, who apparently Baldwin called a friend, along with her husband.  He needs to show remorse, true remorse, but is obviously not being allowed to as that would show liability.

When did we create such a culture that an actor, (at the end of the day that is all he is), is treated differently?  It’s been this way for decades, when the all-powerful film studios controlled their actors – changing their names, arranging fake marriages for gay actors, and so on. It’s crazy; we do hold ‘celebrities’ in an almost revered light.  Why?  They are just actors or singers or television presenters.  Why, for example, aren’t brain surgeons who save people’s lives every day, viewed in the same light?   So many people, without any real talent, are followed by millions who live for their very word and spend so much of their lives following these people’s lives, doesn’t allow them to have any life of their own.  It is very sad.

The FBI are still apparently testing the gun and the results will be telling, but Baldwin, through his interview has already laid out his side of the story; perhaps he shouldn’t have been allowed to but that is the culture we have today, and it’s wrong.

I honestly think that if it was me I wouldn’t be able to make any excuses, regardless of the truth, an innocent person is dead.  I’d put my hands up, say sorry and accept whatever fate has in store for me.

This year can surely only be better than the last two as we strive to get back to a new normal if nothing else.

This year I have the third in the Ballad series of books published, Ballad of a Shooting Star.

What is exciting for me is that I am revisiting the first in the series, Ballad of Joshua Tree, which is going to be republished with a new edition and cover, and it is also being adapted as a limited series for television.

For years when asked what do I consider myself, I’ve always replied that first and foremost I’m a songwriter, but the truth is that I started to write stories before I wrote songs.

The first story I really remember writing was in primary school. I was about ten or eleven and we had been given the first line of a story and had to write the rest. I was already influenced by Enid Blyton and her books about children investigating mysteries. There was the Famous Five, the Secret Seven and the Five Find-outers and dog amongst others.

I wrote the story about a cave on a beach, and of course there were smugglers and bad guys and picnics with egg sandwiches and ginger beer and the children in the story solved the mystery of course!

By the time I was twelve or so I had over two hundred books by Blyton. I had always loved music though and started playing guitar at around that time and started to write songs. I love story songs but I think writing and songwriting has kept me sane, or relatively so, all these years; writing was an outlet for my teenage emotions.

I don’t consider that I have a dark side, but my stories do as they explore the darkness of some humans.

There’s another new book coming this year, but it is a screenplay.

The Killing Rain is something of a departure for me as a storyline goes. I think everyone should know their strengths and weaknesses, and I’ve certainly got weaknesses! I’m relatively lazy for one thing. My strength is dialogue and characters and I think The Killing Rain is perfect for this.

Finally there’s a new collection of poetry this year, Sunrise Sunset.

Blyton had well over six hundred books in total so I’m a long, long way from that!

Terraced houses in the snow

Christmas

So, it’s that time of year again.  This year, perhaps more so than in generations we live in a world divided, a fairly volatile world, with so much hatred and stress.  There is so much love in the world though too.  

Also more than ever we seem to have truly forgotten the spirit of Christmas and the meaning of Christmas.  It has become so commercial and I doubt there’s any going back.

I was so lucky to experience wonderful Christmases.  Both my parents loved Christmas and taught me that it is about the giving; it is better to give then to receive and it is.

Every Christmas I remember those days in Cardiff as a young kid.  Close to Christmas Day I would walk down a small lane to my grandmother’s tobacco and sweet shop on Wellfield Road.  She had a giant stuffed bear in there, just like the one on Andy Williams’ tv show.

Wellfield Road – my nan’s shop was at the end by the church

Loaded up with sweets I’d walk then to Albany Road and then up Alfred Street home.  I used to love walking past the rows of terraced houses which had Christmas trees and lights in their windrows, lighting my way home.

Albany Road

As I got older, this is way before my teens though, I would cycle everywhere, even in the snow.

I remember my mum taking me to see Disney’s A Hundred and One Dalmatians original film  at the Globe cinema at the end of Albany Road and when we came out it had been snowing.

Another Christmas I had been staying across the road at my Auntie Teedee’s, (her name was Edith, which I couldn’t say apparently, hence Teedee, and she wasn’t my real aunt, rather my grandmother’s best friend.  I used to love her house, and one room in particular.  It was her son’s room with all wood shelves and books and more books.  Raymond had a very secret job for the government in India and was away a lot (I think he was a spy?).  Anyway, this one Christmas it again snowed over night.  The snow was deep, three or four foot high and my dad had to pick me up and carry me across the street home.

My childhood home

I remember the church services on ChrIstmas Eve at Albany Road Baptist church, my grandmother and Teedee, and my mum, singing in the choir.

I spent many evenings in this lane behind my house, playing tennis and soccer

A few years a later when I was about twelve, I went carol singing up and down the narrow streets with my dear friend Wayne.  Armed with a guitar, I knew about two or three chords but we muddled our way through a couple of carols.

My old primary school – this was one of the roads Wayne and I went carol singing down!

These, and a lot more, are all special memories and that’s what Christmas is for really, making memories, and for giving and for celebration.

My father had a number of Jewish friends as well as Arab and Indian friends, and they all celebrated the time of year, regardless of religion or faith. He was an amazing man who still reduces me to tears when I think of him, as right now.

I miss both my parents, especially at Christmas, and I will be forever grateful to them for the amazing memories and Christmases.  I remember laughter, and the food; the annual Morecambe and Wise Christmas television special; waking up at 12.30 and looking at my clock and thinking it was six so I started opening presents at the end of my bed! (I got an Action Man space shuttle that year!).

I remember going down to the kitchen when everyone else was asleep and getting the remains of the turkey from the fridge and taking it up to my bedroom for a feast as I read whichever annual I’d had that year, listening on my small radio my dad had bought me in Switzerland that summer to 208, Radio Luxembourg.

Such priceless memories.

I wish you a safe and peaceful Christmas and I hope Father Christmas, St. Nick, Papa Noel, Ded Moroz, Tomte, Christkind, Los Reyes Magos or Santa Claus or whoever brings you what you’ve wished for.

Merry Christmas.